I often return to early morning bird photography at the nearby beach at Sandy Point Park on Chesapeake Bay. The shoreline of the park faces east across the bay and is a good place to see the sunrise, but my real focus is the gulls that fly around the beach in the early morning light. I am there to practice techniques of photographing these birds in flight.
Those who live near the water or frequent beaches are very familiar with the antics of the gulls. Our beach trips are sometimes punctuated by gulls hovering overhead in hopes of diving for a bag of unguarded French fries. For me they are perfect practice subjects for capturing nuances of birds in flight. In the images shown here, I am trying to show a different way of portraying these ubiquitous birds as they glide over water or keep an eye out while sitting on the beach.
There are many species of gulls, but the most common in this area are the Laughing Gull and the Ring Billed Gull. Often these species are seen together in the same location. Although people refer to “sea gulls”, there are no birds by that name. In the 16th century, a “gull” referred to a person who was naïve and would believe, or “swallow” anything. Later, the term described the birds that do truly eat almost anything, and some people were called “gullible”.
I will continue to visit the gulls to practice my birds in flight photography, while keeping my lunch carefully guarded.
